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Avatar Studios was revealed in February, there's no way any worthwhile animated content could be created in that time frame unless they were working deep undercover for at least a year.
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Apr 17, 2021 15:00
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doomrider7 posted:That still boggles my mind. Like the moment the film was ANNOUNCED they were making comparisons to ATLA and the movie REALLY does not shy away at all from that. And yeah the rage is twitter in a Nutshell to gain followers, clout, etc., and kindly let them know that you make content on YouTube and Patreon. It's like loving clockwork at this point. Screen Junkies, a group on YouTube with 6.75 million followers, did an 'Honest Trailer' for Raya where the FIRST JOKE is how it's similar to AtlA. I had no idea this was considered a controversial take.
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Apr 17, 2021 15:24
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I don't think anyone said the AtLA comparison was off. It was the idiotic assertion that AtLA 's Hero Call to Power story was so unique that other YA media was aping it. Then the poorly phrased followup.
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Apr 17, 2021 16:13
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watched millenium actress last night. like all of satoshi kon's work, it was amazing i love the concept of being enthralled by a storyteller that you're taken into the world
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Apr 17, 2021 16:19
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galenanorth posted:They rejected more Avatar content when they thought they were up to their ears in ideas for shows, on the heels of all the things that came out in the 90s and 2000s, then nearly two decades later, they announce a new series, but it's just online fan discussion vtubing except made by the company that made Avatar, instead of more Avatar. This is like Disney using May 4 to announce a new series about fans debating Star Wars and then saying "welp, that's all". I'm convinced Avatar the Last Airbender was lightning in a bottle, and any sequel series isn't going to be nearly as successful and good.
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Apr 17, 2021 16:38
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I do feel like atla doesn’t get enough poo poo for its ending though. Does everyone just choose to forget that the series ends by a literal magic frog solving the central moral conflict plaguing the main character for the season as a whole and the climax of the series in specific? It’s a literal Deus Ex Machina? How is this not poo poo on enough as a betrayal of the overriding conflict of the season and with Aang as a developed character? Like imagine if more tv series ended with magic loving frogs solving everything for the main character. Final episode of Breaking Bad, how is Walt gonna beat the Nazis, how is he going to redeem himself for all the morally rep- oh look a magic loving frog did everything for him. Final episode of Mad Men, Don Draper has run away from NYC and has a moral crisis of conscience as he’s realized the weight of all the people he’s wronged, how is he going to fix the deep fuckups he’s - oh look a magic loving frog did all the emotional heavy lifting, everything is fine now. Final episode of Homestuck, how are they going to resolve all the issues at once in a satisfying way - wait. Huh.
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Apr 17, 2021 16:49
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NieR Occomata posted:I do feel like atla doesn’t get enough poo poo for its ending though. Does everyone just choose to forget that the series ends by a literal magic frog solving the central moral conflict plaguing the main character for the season as a whole and the climax of the series in specific? It’s a literal Deus Ex Machina? How is this not poo poo on enough as a betrayal of the overriding conflict of the season and with Aang as a developed character? Because Aang's entire story was about refusing to just kill people and stick to his true nature so no amount of it being sudden can change the fact that Aang learning to fully embrace the Avatar State and doing so to not kill a bad person who everyone told him to kill is 100% thematically appropriate.
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Apr 17, 2021 17:05
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Ah yes literally introducing a brand new type of bending literally never mentioned before the climax up to that point taught to him by a magic loving frog in a dream sequence as they spent literally the entire season up to that point waffling how Aang has exactly two options to deal with the Fire Lord is in no way a textbook Deus Ex Machina. Like the resolution of the climax of the show is exactly how a spineless show ends. Introduce exactly two ways to solve a problem, create moral ambiguity and anguish over how it can get solved since neither option is acceptable, than magically introduce a third option that somehow solves it with absolutely no downsides whatsoever.
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Apr 17, 2021 17:29
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There's also poo poo in there about the evolution of a largely stagnant and arguably dying* artform with Toph's Metalbending, Katara's Bloodbending, and Zuko/Azula's Plasma/Lightiningbending. As the Avatar and bridge between worlds, Aang learns to manipulate the very energies that bestow bending on people and then has to shoulder the responsible use of said power. The derided frogs were literally the spirits that bestowed the knowledge of bending on humans so I don't even really get what the narrative issue with them is.... aside from it being kind of an asspull. (* Sky Nomads, extinct. Water Tribes isolated, Bai Sing Sei a prison state... it was basically Firebending supremacy)
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Apr 17, 2021 17:37
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Like...let’s be real, the climax and resolution of the show reeks of corporate intervention, where Nickelodeon probably straight-up told the showrunners that they couldn’t have the protagonist murdering a dude onscreen and the showrunners had wrote themselves into a corner and kind of threw their hands up and went for the easy out that let them get out as cleanly as possible. But again, that’s ultimately on the showrunners for constantly hitting home up until the climax that Aang could either kill the fire lord or let him live as a tyrant over and over and over and over but when push came to shove just ran away from their own consequences. And again energy bending could have been built to. There’s a hugely pointless like four episode arc in that season where Zuko has to spend exactly one episode with everyone individually so we get that character chemistry that’s never been done before; it’s a bad section of the show that really artificially tries to engender some sort of relationship between Zuko and the Aang crew that feels both unbelievably orchestrated and kind of unnecessary. They could’ve easily replaced that with a four episode arc where Aang hears about this mysterious new power and has to go on a quest to find and unlock it at the last minute, but they don’t and instead just have it shoved into the climax where Aang mine as well had some level-up ding and a chyron underneath him go “boss beating spell unlocked”.
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Apr 17, 2021 17:49
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there is 0% chance that Bryke had any intention of having Aang kill the emperor
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Apr 17, 2021 17:53
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I cracked up at the "oh is it my turn to have a field trip with Zuko" line or whatever it was Anyway it's maybe the only show that could have done something interesting with "villain ends up dangling/falling off a cliff in a way that absolves the protagonist of moral burdens"
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Apr 17, 2021 18:04
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I remember in one of the season 2 commentaries that there was a small turtle-lion cameo, and the writers regretted not introducing them earlier. Also, maybe energy bending feels like a cop-out but "a twelve year old pacifist has to learn to murder" is definitely a lovely ending. Also every other part of the ending slaps. The airship fight, the final Agni Kai, that soundtrack, everything.
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Apr 17, 2021 18:10
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I hope Studio Mir comes back to do whatever new Avatar content comes out. I've been enjoying their work on the Dota Netflix show.
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Apr 17, 2021 18:14
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It also doesn't gently caress up rewatching the rest of the series like Game of Thrones did
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Apr 17, 2021 18:16
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I think the only way you get around the ending and remove Ozai is some kind of "I will take the Full potential of the comet into me"/'no wait, that's too much power for one man'/"oh no my hubriiiiiisssssssss*!" Situation where he's burned out physically or spiritually and Aang was unable to stop him. Plus it's not like Aang just zorped him, dude almost got overpowered when he initiated the thing. NieR Occomata posted:And again energy bending could have been built to. Aang's is just being pushed into being a spiritual arbiter of destiny, something his pacifism and personality grows to and previously shuns. It's Aang being entrusted with something that could be wholly destructive in the wrong hands. FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Apr 17, 2021 |
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Apr 17, 2021 18:19
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I didn't mind Aang getting a wholly new power to resolve the problem, but I do agree that it would have been much better for the show to build up to it over the course of the third season. The lion-turtle does show up as a background detail earlier, but that doesn't tell the audience anything about it. Aang could have been shown actively seeking some new option earlier on, and maybe we could have had an episode where he goes into the spirit world earlier in the season that kickstarts the process somehow. I actually otherwise like the ending since, aside from the protagonist killing someone being inappropriate for a kids' show, I don't really see how killing Ozai necessarily ends the war. Azula (or whoever's next in line if she's too crazy) would just take over if he died, or maybe the Fire Nation would splinter into a bunch of smaller warring factions if there's no clear heir. This is the same reason Zuko can't just try to kill him in the eclipse episode. I always felt that the explanation as to why the Fire Nation was willing to stop fighting and accept the twice-disgraced Zuko as the new Fire Lord is because their king was dethroned by the envoy of heaven performing a miracle, rather him merely losing a fight. I don't like that it's narratively sudden, but it fits right in with the setting.
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Apr 17, 2021 18:48
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The only reason there's a conflict between pacifism and the urgency of political change that needs to be resolved in a "cop out" is because the story frames that conflict in such a way as to appear to be inevitable and irresolvable. There's nothing inherent in the premise of the show that necessitates Ozai's murder. Most of the time, individual episodes frame conflicts in ways that never ask our protagonists to kill anyone. Even in the finale, nobody discusses whether Azula needs to be killed, since apparently she can just be frozen, handcuffed, and put in jail. What writing the final battle between Aang and Ozai in this way, a way that's unique to every other conflict in the story, does is tie to any number of themes in the show. The connection I find most personally satisfying is the idea of spiritual transcendence. One of the ideas that runs through the story is that the Avatar is a superheroic figure who exists apart from society yet determines its course. He does so through a deep connection to the spiritual world, which includes not just the diegetic "spirit world" but also Hindu and Buddhist spiritual philosophy and a meaningful connection with deceased ancestors, among others. The resolution to the battle with Ozai, then, is totally thematically consistent. Everyone Aang talks to attempts to convince him to kill Ozai, grounding him in material political concerns, but only Aang is capable of reaching outside this paradigm to transcend this false dichotomy. If you had "set up" the lion turtle earlier, the story isn't about doing the impossible in order to transcend the limitations of mortal politics, but rather about pursuing a logically moral course of action at personal expense. That's not a bad story, but it is a thematically distinct one.
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Apr 17, 2021 19:06
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The only difference between Aang getting energy bending and Goku learning SSJ3 literally in the middle of the fight with Buu to try and beat him is at least Goku didn’t spend half a season having a fake moral dilemma about what it means to go past SSJ2 and the implications of what it could mean to his worldview, and you didn’t have him constantly talking to King Kai about how he only has two options to beat Buu, either go SSJ2 or let Buu destroy the world and turn everyone to chocolate. And people poo poo on DBZ all the time, and it’s totally deserved, for nonsensical out of nowhere completely convenient power ups that solve all of Goku’s problems for him. At least it is what it says for is and doesn’t try to set up some ultimately false moral dilemma about what Goku is doing. Spoiler: Goku wins, who cares how we get there.
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Apr 17, 2021 19:14
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So you basically wanted Avatar to do the Frieza ending? Where Aang goes into Avatar Mode+ and Ozai gives himself the Spicy Anakin, just for Aang to grant him Spirit Power and ultimately hit him with the Avatar DaiRyuuken when Ozai takes his second chance to try and kill Aang?? At this point I feel like we're arguing that the show should have ended the way you wanted to because.
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Apr 17, 2021 19:42
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FilthyImp posted:So you basically wanted Avatar to do the Frieza ending? Where Aang goes into Avatar Mode+ and Ozai gives himself the Spicy Anakin, just for Aang to grant him Spirit Power and ultimately hit him with the Avatar DaiRyuuken when Ozai takes his second chance to try and kill Aang?? Alright I don't give a poo poo about Avatar, but how the gently caress is what you described "the Frieza ending"? DBZ gets poo poo on a lot for random power ups, and that's not entirely undeserved, but the orginal super saiyan mode that Goku used to defeat Frieza was actually foreshadowed pretty well by the standards of the series. Frieza killed most of the saiyans because he feared they would gain access to a power that would defeat him, Vegeta tries to gain access to this power, he fails and is defeated, but the shock of his death causes Goku to successfully gain access to that power and kill defeat Frieza with it just as Frieza feared would happen all along. It's not Shakespeare, but it's a functionally well structured setup and a far cry from whatever the Hell you just described.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:02
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NieR Occomata posted:The only difference between Aang getting energy bending and Goku learning SSJ3 literally in the middle of the fight with Buu to try and beat him is at least Goku didn’t spend half a season having a fake moral dilemma about what it means to go past SSJ2 and the implications of what it could mean to his worldview, and you didn’t have him constantly talking to King Kai about how he only has two options to beat Buu, either go SSJ2 or let Buu destroy the world and turn everyone to chocolate. In what sense is the dilemma fake? Just because Aang discovers a semi-peaceful way to resolve the conflict doesn't mean he's not troubled by what everyone else is telling him or that he doesn't have to defend his point of view or that he doesn't have to search for his own solution apart from his entire support system.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:09
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Alright I don't give a poo poo about Avatar, but how the gently caress is what you described "the Frieza ending"? Basically instead of Aang finding a Third Way.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:14
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FilthyImp posted:It's literally the last interaction that Goku has with the dude, after he gets chopped by his destructo discs. Goku tried to spare Frieza though, but Frieza still tried to use the last of his power to murder him anyway. So basically it'd be like if after Aang found a third way the Fire Lord pulled out a knife and kept trying to shank him until Aang was forced to kill the dude in self defense. At which point I guess the moral would be "look out for dudes with knives" which is a practical lesson, but not one that ties into the rest of the series I'm assuming.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:42
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FilthyImp posted:So you basically wanted Avatar to do the Frieza ending? Where Aang goes into Avatar Mode+ and Ozai gives himself the Spicy Anakin, just for Aang to grant him Spirit Power and ultimately hit him with the Avatar DaiRyuuken when Ozai takes his second chance to try and kill Aang?? I don’t want it to end the way I wanted it, I just want it to admit what it is - DBZ with no killing - over some grand beautiful philosophical argument about the nature of whatever the gently caress because it’s not mature enough, either on a storytelling or real-world level, to actually validate those aims. It’s Weeaboo Anime, made by white dudes who engage in Asian Culture Tourism to watch a bald kid get the four macguffins so he can go super Saiyan against the Big Fire Dude. Just embrace what it is instead of pretending to be something it isn’t for a whole season only to go back to DBZ in the finale.
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Apr 17, 2021 20:55
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from that perspective I think it is fair to say that, yes, AtLA was lightning in a bottle seeing as Korra gave us more of those story beats but without the grounding that the full writing team had (I mean season 2 ends with a kaiju/eva fight)
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Apr 17, 2021 21:30
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NieR Occomata posted:I don’t want it to end the way I wanted it, I just want it to admit what it is - DBZ with no killing - over some grand beautiful philosophical argument about the nature of whatever the gently caress because it’s not mature enough, either on a storytelling or real-world level, to actually validate those aims. It’s Weeaboo Anime, made by white dudes who engage in Asian Culture Tourism to watch a bald kid get the four macguffins so he can go super Saiyan against the Big Fire Dude. Just embrace what it is instead of pretending to be something it isn’t for a whole season only to go back to DBZ in the finale. Well sure it's not mature, it's introducing children to these themes. This is like complaining Grover is teaching you about "W" and not instead reading Finnegan's Wake.
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Apr 17, 2021 21:31
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NieR Occomata posted:Weeaboo Anime  Anyway, for a kid's cartoon series on Nick (i.e. context) I think it did well. And yeah, it absolutely feels rushed but at least it's somewhat grounded in the world. Korra got close to it following her poisoning and rehabilitation from the last 2 seasons.
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Apr 17, 2021 21:40
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FilthyImp posted:There's also poo poo in there about the evolution of a largely stagnant and arguably dying* artform with Toph's Metalbending, Katara's Bloodbending, and Zuko/Azula's Plasma/Lightiningbending. As the Avatar and bridge between worlds, Aang learns to manipulate the very energies that bestow bending on people and then has to shoulder the responsible use of said power. Yeah there definitely should have been more foreshadowing of the spirit frog. The whole series did a lot of cool moments with spirit stuff but never really explored it enough. And the when they tried with Korra they somehow made the worst season? 🙃 Episode 1 of season 2 of Korra isn’t bad though, aside from the somewhat rushed way she decided to totally abandon Tenzin for some dude she met like a couple times in her life.
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Apr 17, 2021 22:03
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The 7th Guest posted:there is 0% chance that Bryke had any intention of having Aang kill the emperor In the leak of an extremely early series outline that notoriously had Iroh turn out to be the real final boss the energybending/Ozai lives ending is pretty much exactly the same. edit: I feel like the ATLA ending has aged well because it's kind of the diametric opposite of the Game of Thrones ending; it's thematically appropriate even if it's not the most foreshadowed or lore appropriate. The GOT ending is technically foreshadowed and predictable but feels awful. mycot fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Apr 17, 2021 |
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Apr 17, 2021 22:29
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Avatar was never going to end with Aang killing someone because it wasn't the story of a good-hearted kid learning when to kill but the story of a good-hearted kid trying to find a way to mesh his duties and his personal beliefs. The story never really put forth the idea that the Avatar couldn't kill Ozai. It put forth that Aang didn't want to solve a situation with killing, even if previous Avatars did. The actual event is an asspull but it's an asspull born from the themes of the story and building up everything that was leading up to it and "when the protagonist accepts his role they transcend and gain something new" is such a common ending beat that it's hard to complain about it. It comes across sounding like the "How did (x) get so good at (y), we never saw them TRAINING" stuff. The important beat was that Aang managed to achieve the Avatar State fully and in his own control and once he did so he was able to come up with a solution that fit his own goals. He became the Avatar, not just the kid with superpowers who was constantly in the shadow of his predecessors. The fact that it was an entirely new power is fine because the series spent quite a bit of time establishing A) The Avatar deals with spirits and B) Bending as an art is absolutely far from mastered and as mentioned above we see characters who are not the omnipotent god-avatar breaking the established 'rules' of bending on their own.
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Apr 17, 2021 22:39
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I loved the bits where you got to see Avatars at their strongest, like Kyoshi severing a chunk of the continent using a combination of earth, fire, water and airbending and just loving off across the sea with it. She stole an entire city. She was probably the most badass of the prior Avatars. I just love that during the trial she's just like "Yeah, I killed him. He died because he was a fuckwit." The one power I hated was the Combustion Benders, they just took me out of things whenever they appeared because they didn't fit. They have no martial art or anything , they just look at something and it explodes. It's weird. BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Apr 17, 2021 |
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Apr 17, 2021 22:48
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BioEnchanted posted:The one power I hated was the Combustion Benders Like if they were some Zen Hate master I might see it. Just a totally calm and collected Nihilist
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Apr 17, 2021 22:55
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BioEnchanted posted:I loved the bits where you got to see Avatars at their strongest, like Kyoshi severing a chunk of the continent using a combination of earth, fire, water and airbending and just loving off across the sea with it. She stole an entire city. She was probably the most badass of the prior Avatars. I just love that during the trial she's just like "Yeah, I killed him. He died because he was a fuckwit." Third eye, man.
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Apr 17, 2021 23:00
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I honestly love the trial because most shows would have had Kyoshi be completely innocent of the charges, but nope - she did and the village just wasn't going to forgive the avatar for that, which honestly feels more realistic than how this kind of plot tends to go.
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Apr 17, 2021 23:15
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The kind of extrajudicial powers the Avatar has is kind of a problem as the series moves closer to modern society. Works better in a “fog of history, spirits are trying to maintain balance through this apostle of theirs” sort of way.
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Apr 18, 2021 01:07
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Robindaybird posted:I honestly love the trial because most shows would have had Kyoshi be completely innocent of the charges, but nope - she did and the village just wasn't going to forgive the avatar for that, which honestly feels more realistic than how this kind of plot tends to go. And in the first prequel novel, she’s also kind of responsible for wrecking a tea house in that same village.
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Apr 18, 2021 02:24
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NieR Occomata posted:a literal magic frog solving the central moral conflict
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Apr 18, 2021 03:31
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galenanorth posted:They rejected more Avatar content when they thought they were up to their ears in ideas for shows, on the heels of all the things that came out in the 90s and 2000s, then nearly two decades later, they announce a new series, but it's just online fan discussion vtubing except made by the company that made Avatar, instead of more Avatar. This is like Disney using May 4 to announce a new series about fans debating Star Wars and then saying "welp, that's all". About 2 months ago Nick did acquire the rights to more shows set in the Avatar universe so there's probably more coming at some point. Also, despite Aaron Ehasz being kind of a sexist POS I did actually like The Dragon Prince way more than I was expecting to (no idea when it's coming back though) Larryb fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Apr 18, 2021 |
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Apr 18, 2021 15:22
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perepelki posted:all stories should end like this. it's time to give frogs the respect they deserve IIRC, Yoda is apparently inspired by some legend of a frog who gives the worthy lessons on legendary martial arts asskicking. No wonder he's fanon family with Kermit.
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Apr 18, 2021 16:01
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